


a family of trees

by gilligankane



Series: Vanity Fest, 2018 [5]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 22:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: It’s his father.He recognizes him quickly - the high forehead, the thin nose. He has the same features - he’s studied them in the washroom mirror for hours, wondering where they’d come from.“Your father, I reckon,” Ma had said, shrugging her shoulders. She’s pressed her thumb to his pointed chin. “No matter. You’re all ‘Ness on the inside, aren’t you?”He’s all Kirin Kotchea on the outside, though.





	a family of trees

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 5 of Vanity Fest - _Celebrations, **Family** , and Friends_

“Are you sure about this?” Moses asks, staring up at the building in front of them.

Johnny shakes his head slowly, eyes roaming over the worn sign he’s been looking at for nearly ten minutes now, willing his feel to move. “No,” he admits. “I’m not.”

Moses drops a hand on his shoulder, squeezing softly. “Come on, bro. It’s not the end of the world.”

_ No _ , Johnny thinks.  _ It’s the start _ .

 

-

His mums get married on a rainy day the year he turns seven.

Mum pouts at the window for ages before Ma comes in - even though Granny Megan is hollering at her to leave, that it’s bad luck for the brides to see each other before the wedding - and hugs her and tells her that rain is good luck and Granny Megan can go-

Mum stops her before she says the rest, but Johnny  _ knows _ it was going to be something funny. Ma always says the funniest things. 

The suit he’s in feel funny, like it’s been dipped in glue and hung to dry. Mum has to help him button his trousers because he’s grown a bit since the fitting but he manages the waistcoat all on his own. She gets teary-eyed when she fixes his collar and Granny Megan does that sighing thing she does a lot and makes him go and get tissues from the loo before Mum ruins her makeup.

Granny Megan doesn’t call it a loo, but Ma always says that it’s because she thinks she’s too fancy for the commonfolk.

“Am I common?” he had asked her.

Ma had gotten a funny look on her face and touched the small scar on the top of his forehead. “No,” she’d said. “You’re extraordinary, you.”

He grabs the tissues and starts back down the stairs, pausing when he hears Granny Megan start in on Mum. He hides in the shadows of the stairs, just like Moses taught him, and holds his breath, listening in on them. 

“If you repeat this, I’ll lie,” Granny Megan says. “But Charity was right. Rain  _ is _ good luck. And if anyone deserves luck on their wedding day, Vanessa Woodfield, it’s you.”

Mum hiccups. “I don’t need luck. I’ve got everything I want.”

He rolls his eyes and reminds himself to tell Moses later on that Mum was being  _ sentimental _ again. 

“And it’s Vanessa Dingle,” Mum continues. “At least, it will be.”

Granny Megan makes a noise that sounds like she’s choking on tea. “It’s not too late to keep-”

“I’m taking Dingle,” Mum says over her. “Charity has given so much. It’s time... Well, it’s time to let her have a little of herself, yeah?”

Granny Megan is quiet for such a long time that he sure she’s done talking. He stomps down the stairs, the tissues in his hands, and stops short at the bottom of the landing. Granny Megan stands up quickly, pinching at the corners of her eyes. There’s tears in Mum’s eyes, too, but she blinks them back and gestures for him to come closer. She doesn’t even go for the tissues, reaching for him instead and pulling him close enough so that all he’s breathing in is the flowery smell of her dress and the perfume she dabs on her wrists. It smells like  _ her _ and for a second, he forgets that his waistcoast and trousers and new shoes are pinching and he holds on tight.

Mum cries harder.

“Enough of this,” Granny Megan declares. “Let’s go make you a Dingle, shall we?”

He wrinkles his nose. “But Mum already drank from the welly. And Uncle Zak said that made her a Dingle.”

Granny Megan rolls her eyes. “Then let’s go make it official. Come on, love. Get your mum’s bag now. If we’re late, Charity’ll never let me hear the end of it.” She catches his eye and winks. “Can’t be getting a bad web review, can I?”

Mum shakes her head at him behind Granny Megan’s back and he figures it best to keep quiet about how Ma already wrote a fake review the night before last, when they were all home and watching the telly. She’d held it high above her head while Mum tried to get her to stop and eventually, she promised him and Moses a Dairy Milk each if they held her down.

He didn’t understand what was so funny about her signing it ‘Ms. N. Tooth’, but he figured that’s another grownup thing he’d get someday. At least he had a Dairy Milk.

And when Harriet said, “You may now kiss the bride,” he had a Ma, too.

-

 

Moses doesn’t understand.

He throws a tennis ball up at the ceiling with one hand and catches it with the other. Johnny watches him - back and forth and back and forth - until his eyes ache, and then he throws his old stuffed animal at Moses, the Rubble he wore down years ago. Moses drops the tennis ball and sits up, glaring at Johnny. 

“What’re you?”

Johnny spins in his desk chair, the one on wheels Moses is always tipping one way or the other. “I’m  _ trying _ to talk to you.”

Moses sighs and rolls his eyes. “Talk, talk, talk.”

“Not all of us only whisper to animals,” Johnny fires back.

Moses shrugs. “I can’t help it if I’m a cow-whisper.”

“That’s a nasty thing to call your girlfriend.” Johnny ducks the stuffed Rubble as it comes towards his head. He grins, the smile wiped off his face as the next stuffed animal, a duck his Ma had given him when she and Moses and Noah moved in, catches him square in the nose. He scowls. “Moses.”

“Johnny,” Moses mocks. “What’s the big deal, yeah? It’s a school assignment. It’s not the end of the world.”

Johnny looks down at the top of his desk, pushing aside the papers until the written assignment is in front of him. “Easy for you,” he mutters.

Moses slides down the length of the bed, putting his feet on the floor. “Is this about-”

“No,” Johnny spits. “It’s nothing to do with him.”

“It’s just that you’ve been nosing around Mum for a week now, looking for clues,” Moses says slowly. He sounds like Mum, like a pig farmer trying to lead a pig in the direction it’s supposed to be heading.

_ Usually to slaughter _ , Ma always says. But she always ends up saying what she’s been trying to get out, so it can’t be all that bad.

“Am not,” Johnny defends.

“Are so.”

“Am-”

“Moz, Johnny?” Ma calls. “Get a move on, yeah? We’re going to be late for the pictures.”

Moses lifts himself off the bed and leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. Johnny looks at him for a moment. He looks just like the pictures of Uncle Ross, except he’s got Ma’s eyes and chin and hair.  _ Spitting image of good and bad _ , Ma calls him. She usually smiles after.

Moses winks at him before leaning into the hallway. “We don’t want to!” he shouts.

Johnny frowns. He  _ does _ want to go to the pictures. He saw an advert for something with dinosaurs and he knows that if no one from school is around, he can get Moses to tag along.

Ma’s heels sound on the stairs. “What’s that?”

“If we wanted to catch our mums snogging, we’d just stay home,” Moses calls back.

There’s the sound of something hitting the ground and then Ma’s laugh, bright and loud floating through the house.

“We do not!” Mum shouts.

“Do so!” Moses fires back. “None of the other mums do that.”

Mum giggles loudly and Johnny catches Moses’s eye, sticking a finger down his throat. Moses laughs silently, the glee fading into something like horror when Mum squeals. Ma cackles and the sound of her heels moves farther away. Johnny can picture them running around the living room - he hears the moment Ma runs into the small table near the couch and Mum laughs harder before it fades away, muffled.

_ Probably by Ma’s mouth _ , he thinks with a grimace.

“Change of plans!” Ma yells up a moment later. She sounds slightly out of breath. “There’s a tenner in it for you if you stay upstairs, eh?”

“ _ Charity!”  _ Mum squeals, still laughing.

Moses rolls his eyes and hooks his thumb over his shoulder as he kicks the door shut. “Does  _ that _ answer any of your questions?”

Johnny wants to say ‘no’, that it doesn’t answer any of his questions. But Moses looks hopeful and he’s starting to snap his fingers together nervously, like he’s afraid that Johnny’ll say ‘no’ and go on upsetting a wasp’s nest over something he thinks is silly anyway.

So Johnny puts on a fake smile, the kind Ma has when she’s been out to see her dad at the place he moved into where someone changes his bedsheets once a day, and nods. “Course it does.”

“ _ Good _ ,” Moses sighs. “Now, can you help me with that English assignment? Ms. Cable says I’ve got to read the book, same as everyone else. Even though the letters get all mixed up,” he finishes in a murmur.

Johnny holds out a hand, a  _ gimme _ gesture. “Come on, then. Let’s see how many chapters we can get through before they quit holding us hostage.”

 

-

He doesn’t think much of it. Not at first.

He’s always sat at the end of assembly, next to Robin Wicker and Thomas Wullf. Year after year, he’s sat, small and quiet in between them, usually picking through a crossword Ma has printed out for him to work on.

But now he’s in Year 7 and at the start of the school year, he files in behind Moses and sits down, elbowing Moses when Emma Call turns red when she meets Moses’s eye. Moses elbows him back and slips him a wine gum he swiped from Ma’s stash. They share a smile as they push them past their lips and under their tongues; no doubt Ms. Grant will tell Ma if she catches them. 

“Mr. Woodfield,” Ms. Grant says as she walks past their aisle. She crooks her finger at him and Johnny feels his shoulders slump. “A word.”

He makes it through the aisle, only stepping on two people - one of them is Abel Gibson and Johnny knows his cheeks are just as red as Abel’s trainers now - before he stumbles out of the row. 

“I’d have thought our best and brightest would know their alphabet by now,” Ms. Grant says cheerfully. She points to the empty seat between Robin and Thomas.

Johnny frowns, looking at the seat she’s referencing and the one he’s just left. “But…” He shakes his head. “But I’m Moses’s brother.”

Ms. Grant’s smile doesn’t waver. “Of course you are, Johnny. But we still have to sit alphabetically. Now, be a dear and head to your seat. We have a special guest speaker for our start-of-the-school-year assembly.” She pats him gently on the shoulder and continues towards the small stage, stopping every other row to greet one student or another.

Johnny watches her, confusion building into an uncomfortable knot in his chest. 

_ But I’m Moses’s brother _ , he wants to shout again. He doesn’t, though, his shoulders dropping as he avoids Moses’s eyes and slinks back into his usual seat. Robin gives him a nods and Thomas smiles and Johnny pulls the crossword out of his pocket, the one Ma slipped to him for help this morning, and bends over it, pressing his pen too hard against the page.

Moses asks, later, why he didn’t come back to sit down, but Johnny ignores him and teaches him the card game he saw Uncle Pete and Leo playing the other day.

 

-

“Mum,” Johnny says slowly. She’s shuffling papers on the kitchen table, a pencil behind one ear and another tucked into her hair. She doesn’t look up for a moment, eyes scanning the reports in front of her. He watches her pat the table with a flat hand, searching for something, and he rolls his eyes before plucking the pencil from behind her ear and holding it in her face.

“Oh, thank you, darling,” she sighs. She erases a note she’s made on an expenditure report and drops everything, sitting back and looking up at him. “Can’t say I love ‘bring your paperwork home day’ much.”

Johnny frowns at the long list of numbers she’s pointing at. “Just have Ma do it,’ he suggests. “You know she’s good with numbers.”

Mum considers it for a moment, a smile growing on her face. “And I’m good at-”

“No!” Johnny says loudly, clapping his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I was  _ going _ to say tea,” Mum finishes, rolling her eyes. “Now, spill.”

“Spill what?” Johnny asks. His voice does that thing it’s been doing lately, where he speaks but there’re no sounds for a few seconds.  _ Puberty _ , Ma had said, disdain in her voice.  _ We’ll have to ship the lot of them off. Remember our Noah during puberty? _ She had shuddered and threatened to send Johnny to Ibiza if he started acting up, but she’d smiled and kissed him on the forehead, too. 

Mum shakes her head a bit. “Whatever secret you’re keeping. Did your Ma tell you not to tell me something? You know she likes to wind me up.”

Johnny swallows hard. Moses had called him out, and he’d been right. He’s been tiptoeing around for days, too nervous to ask the questions brewing in the back of his throat. He watches Mum look back at her pile of papers distractedly, her attention wavering.

He stubs the tips of his toes against the leg of the closest chair and looks around. The living room is bursting with pictures - some old, but most new. There’s his mum’s wedding picture on the mantle, next to the picture of him, Moses, Noah, Ryan, and Debs. His and Moses’s school pictures are in front of a few that Grandpa Frank took - the ones where everyone is laughing, but slightly out of focus. There’s a few thumbs in the corners of those ones.

He has copies of those ones, up in the drawer of his desk.

_ Mum looks happy _ , he thinks.

The back door bangs open and Ma comes in, juggling a bag from David’s. He jumps as she swears, the apron Moses never picked up off the floor tangling around her feet. Mum jumps up from the table, catching her round the waist. The snarl on Ma’s face fades instantly, softening into something else - the same look she has in all the pictures. She mumbles something into Mum’s ear and Mum laughs, lifting up to press a kiss to Ma’s cheek.

_ Everyone looks happy _ , Johnny thinks.

Mum drops the David’s bag on the table on top of her papers, her work forgotten. She catches his eye and looks away, looking back quickly.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she apologises. She turns away from Ma, leaning back against her. Ma’s arm drapes over Mum’s shoulder, curling around her neck as Ma winks at him. “Let me get rid of the missus and we can talk.”

Ma frowns softly. “Everything okay, Johnnybobs?”

_ Everyone looks so happy _ , he thinks.

Ma is still staring at him carefully and Mum is smiling encouragingly. He looks back at the mantle, at the scattering of pictures there - all of them, smiling,  _ complete _ . 

He shakes his head. “You’re alright. Anyway, I’ve got homework to do.”

Ma snorts. “It’s the weekend.”

Johnny shrugs. “I’m right in the middle of  _ Emma _ and I’ve gotten to the part where-”

“Say no more!” Ma shouts. Her eyes are twinkling, though, and Johnny knows she’ll find him later, asking him all kinds of questions about Emma Woodhouse and her adolescent misadventures. “Unbelievable,” she goes on. “One of my boys wouldn’t be caught dead with a book in his hand and the other never puts one down.”

Mum tips her head to the side, eyes on him. “Are you sure, love?”

“‘Course,” he says, nodding firmly. “It’s nothing. Honest.” He holds a hand to his chest, feeling his heart thudding hard back against it. “What’s for tea?”

Mum snorts. “Whatever your mother has managed to pick up.”

Ma picks a slim box out of bag, holding it up with a wide smile. “Meatballs.”

“Oh, good,” Johnny says. “I thought you were going to actually  _ make _ us something.” He turns quickly, moving out of the living room and up the stairs.

“Oi!” Ma shouts after him. “Ungrateful, the lot of you.”

Johnny’s smile drops as he moves up the stairs and he stops in the hallway, back to the wall as he slides down, hugging his knees to his chest. He can hear Moses’s music pulsing from behind their closed bedroom door; Mum complaining about reports down the stairs; Ma tutting and shuffling papers and the hiss of the kettle as she tells Mum to move out of the way and let the professionals handle the numbers game.

_ Everyone is happy _ , he thinks.  _ Everyone but me _ .

 

-

He finds the picture one afternoon, after escaping from another loud Dingle do. Ma had kissed the top of his head and told him he could sneak up to his room for a bit of quiet time; just to be back downstairs in time to wish Noah a Happy Birthday. 

“When the big hand is on the-”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “I’m  _ thirteen _ , Ma. I know how to tell time.”

Ma had pulled back a bit. “Well, fine. You’re a man now. Noted. When’re you going to start pulling your share of the bills?”

“Let me work behind the bar and I will,” he argued.

Ma snorted and tried to pull him close, to press a kiss to the top of his head. “As if your Mum would let me.” 

He had squirmed away, declaring himself  _ thirteen _ again and much too old for kisses from his Ma. 

She eased him towards the stairs, doing a terrible job of hiding the ache in her eyes. “Go on, then.”

Johnny had gone up without a single thought or a look back.

He loves his family. He loves how big it is, how many Aunts and Uncles and cousins he has. But sometimes it’s overwhelming, the whole lot of them shoved into Tug Ghyll’s tiny living room. Ma always seems to know, always has a read on him. She corners him, blocking him from sight when she checks in, and always causes some kind of scene to get him a window of opportunity.

One time, she even hung mistletoe over Grandpa Frank and Uncle Pete and  _ made _ them kiss.

He doesn’t mean to go into his mum’s room, but he knows that Ma took his copy of  _ Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone _ and has been reading it before bed. He wanted to reread the chapter where Hagrid turns Dudley into a pig; sometimes he pretends someone’ll turn James Cable, in the year above him, into a pig, too. 

He deserves it.

The wardrobe is open and there’s a box on the floor, the lid askew. Johnny look over his shoulder, but no one is coming up the stairs. The party is raging a floor below him. He can hear Ma cheering Ryan on and Leo is stomping his feet as he tries to follow along with the dance Eliza was teaching them, before Johnny escaped.

_ Just a little look, yeah _ ?

He toes the cover of the box, knocking it off a bit more

It’s his father.

He recognizes him quickly - the high forehead, the thin nose. He has the same features - he’s studied them in the washroom mirror for hours, wondering where they’d come from.

“Your father, I reckon,” Ma had said, shrugging her shoulders. She’s pressed her thumb to his pointed chin. “No matter. You’re all ‘Ness on the inside, aren’t you?”

He’s all Kirin Kotchea on the outside, though.

Someone comes up the stairs - light steps, so it’s got to Ma - and Johnny shoves the picture into his trousers, wincing when it wrinkles.

“Get lost?” Ma asks, leaning against the doorway.

He turns quickly, his head spinning. He has to blink a few times before Ma comes into focus, but she’s smiling widely, something like affection in her eyes.

“You stole my Harry Potter book,” he accuses.

“Needed a footstool for your Mum, didn’t I?” Ma teases. “She wanted to climb up into that wardrobe of hers. Why, I don’t know. Thought she’d come out of the closet a while back.”

He groans at her bad joke and promises her that he’ll be down in just a minute; he needs to find some picture Moses wanted, from the time he helped birth a calf all by himself while Noah chucked his guts up in the background, so they can show it to Noah’s girlfriend.

He doesn’t pull the picture of Kirin out of his pocket until he’s sure Ma has gone back downstairs. Smoothing it out on his desk, he tucks it into his top desk drawer, under a few word searches Ma had given him for Christmas.

He pauses at the top of the stairs and takes a deep breath. Ma is waiting at the bottom of the stairs and she pulls him close when he gets near enough, tucking him under her arm and kissing the top of his head.

He doesn’t pull away - not this time.

-

“Are you sure about this?” Moses asks, staring up at the building in front of them.

Johnny shakes his head slowly, eyes roaming over the worn sign he’s been looking at for nearly ten minutes now, willing his feel to move. “No,” he admits. “I’m not.”

Moses drops a hand on his shoulder, squeezing softly. “Come on, bro. It’s not the end of the world.”

_ No _ , Johnny thinks.  _ It’s the start _ .

He pushes open the door to Dingle Automotives, the Barton long gone. Cain looks up from the car he’s working on, a hand curled around the bonnet and a rag over his shoulder. He frowns at them, eyes darting back and forth before they settle on Johnny.

“Can I help you?”

Moses shoulders Johnny forward. “I want to know…”

Cain leans forward expectantly. “Well, spit it out, would you?”

“I want to know who I am,” Johnny says in a rush.

Cain shakes his head. “Why’re you asking me? Shouldn’t you be asking your mums?”

Johnny shrugs. “I asked Mum but she told me not to ask Ma. Said it would wind her up.” Johnny can see Cain working through that sentence, figuring out Mum versus Ma. He knows that even a few years later, it’s new to Cain, to everyone, to get names right. But Cain never makes a mistake, even if it takes him a minute. “And Mum says you’re honest.”

Cain narrows his eyes. “Eh? She did?”

Johnny hesitates. “Actually, she said you’re a bit of a crook, but she said you’re honest about the real important stuff."

Cain barks out something like a laugh and puts down the rag in his hand. “Well, go on, then. What do you want to know.”

Johnny pauses again, suddenly unsure if he wants the answers he’s been searching for. He takes a deep breath, mustering up courage the way he’s seen Ma do it before, and swallows back the fear. 

“I want to know where I come from,” he says.

Cain peels back a bit. “What’s that?”

Johnny feels his face flush in embarrassment, but Moses shoulders him gently, so he presses on. “I want to know where I come from.”

“Don’t they teach that at your fancy academy?” Cain asks. He picks his rag up again, to keep his hands busy. Johnny knows it’s his nervous habit.

“Not like… I  _ know _ how I was made.” Johnny shrugs. “But who am I?”

Cain stares at him. “Eh?”

Johnny feels Moses press against his arm again, grounding him. It’s been the same for nearly thirteen years now; Moses, the older brother, always keeping his feet on the ground.

“I was nearly a Barton,” he explains. 

Auntie Moira and his Mum had sat him down once and told him all about the mix-up. He met Adam on a blustery winter morning when he came back to the village a few years ago, but the bond between them had been short and so long ago; Adam had his own boy now, ages younger than Johnny and Adam’s wife’s father’s name. Still, Adam had stared at him for a long while before shaking his hand and Johnny had wondered, if only for a moment, who he’d be if he  _ was  _ a Barton.

Something Johnny doesn’t recognize flashes across Cain’s face. “I remember,” he says quietly.

Johnny starts counting on his fingers. “I was never a Kotchea, not really. I mean, he’s me dad, but he’s not…”

“Your dad,” Cain finishes. 

“I’ve always been a Woodfield,” Johnny continues, the words unsticking from his throat and coming out of his mouth too quickly for him to stop himself. “And now that Ma and Mum are married and finally done with the papers, I’m a Dingle.”

Cain flicks a rag out at him. “Think you answered your question, mate.”

Johnny shakes his head in frustration. Cain doesn’t  _ get  _ it; Cain has never had to wonder who he was. “But  _ how _ can I be a Dingle? If I’ve been all these other people before that?”

Cain drops the rag again and runs his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “You said it yourself.  _ Nearly _ a Barton.  _ Never _ a Kotchea. Used to be a Woodfield, but now you’re not.” Cain’s body jerks in a silent scoff. “All the better for it, yeah? Your mum was right nosey when she was Woodfield. Easier to handle as a Dingle.”

Johnny feels frustration ripple through him; feels Moses move closer to take some of the sting out. “But-” 

Cain cuts him off. “Right. Who do you  _ want _ to be?”

The answer comes quickly; Johnny barely thinks before he speaks. “A Dingle.”

“Then that’s what you are,” Cain says firmly. He reaches out, one finger pressed to Johnny’s chest. “It’s what you are in here, mate. That’s what matters, innit?”

“But-”

“For someone so quick to call themself a Dingle, you’re set on arguing with me, aren’t you?” Cain nearly smiles.

Johnny shakes his head quickly. “I’m not. I just don’t know where I fit.”

“Might be, you’ve been trying to find where you fit your whole life. Your Ma didn’t know who she was until she found your Mum.” That same look from before passes over Cain’s face and Johnny thinks it might something like regret. “Reckon she was looking her whole life, to figure where she fit? But she wasn’t who she wanted to be until she met your Mum.”

Cain’s finger pushes against his chest again. “If  _ this _ says you’re a Dingle, then  _ this _ …” He taps Johnny’s high forehead, the one Kirin gave him. “ _ This _ better get with the program.”

Johnny blinks hard, trying to clear the blur in his eyes. 

“Adam loved you, you know,” Cain says. “I can’t speak for Kirin, but I know Adam thought the world of you. Still, you weren’t meant to be a Barton. Or a Woodfield. Not forever.” He smiles grimly. “You’ve either been given a curse or a blessing, being a Dingle.” He pauses. “And even if you didn’t have that shiny paper calling you one, I reckon you’d still find a way home. Into the family.”

“Home,” Johnny echoes.

Cain’s hand curls over Johnny’s shoulder and squeezes softly. “Welcome home, son.”

 

-

Ma is setting the table for tea when he gets home, trailing behind Mum with his cheeks burning in embarrassment. She’d spotted them both outside of the garage, Johnny still wiping his nose with his sleeve and Moses talking to a family of passing geese. She’d walked them straight home, staring at Johnny the whole time.

“Ma,” he breathes out, crossing the room and crashing into her. His arms go around her shoulders and squeeze tightly, his face tucked into her neck. He’s nearly as tall as she is now, but she holds on tightly like she always has; like he’s starting Year 8 and afraid of James Cable’s sudden growth spurt.

“What’s this, then?”

Mum comes in behind him, Moses dragging his feet after her. “Found them outside of the garage. Your son was crying.”

Ma pulls back, her hands on his shoulders, studying his face. “What’s mean Cain done to our Johnny?” she asks Moses.

Johnny leans in again, his face in Ma’s shoulder. “He said I’m a Dingle,” he says, words muffled by her blouse.

He feels her confusion ripple through her. “Course you are. Who said you weren’t?” She pulls away again. “Was it that gobby Cable boy?”

Johnny shakes his head and starts going on, words rushing out of his mouth before he can stop them. He tells them both about Year 7 and their assigned seating; about what it felt like to meet Adam and not recognize the man who once thought he was his father; about finding Kirin’s picture in Mum’s old box; about having a piece of paper that names him a Dingle but being worried that he’s already been too many people in his life and there’s no room to be a Dingle after all.

Ma wipes the tears rolling down his face, smoothing her hands down the front of her trousers. “Johnnybobs…”

“Cain said…” Johnny hiccups and presses his palm to Ma’s chest. “He said he reckons I’ve always been a Dingle and the universe was just waiting on me to figure it out.”

“Cain,” Ma repeats. She looks over Johnny’s shoulder to Mum, then Moses. “Cain Dingle. Mechanic. Fond of sticking his hand up a cow’s-” She stops at the look on Mum’s face. “ _ Our _ Cain said that? Babe, we need to call hospital. Cain’s head injury might be back.”

Mum rolls her eyes. “Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not!” Ma insists. “Only, that doesn’t sound like  _ our _ Cain.”

“He’s grown,” Mum points out.

“Soft in the head, maybe,” Ma mumbles. She pushes Johnny’s hair up and out of his face, into the same peak he used to wear when he was younger and didn’t know a sparrowhawk from a mohawk. “Of course you’re a Dingle, babe. You always have been,” she says softly.

“That’s what Cain said,” Johnny whispers back.

“I said it better,” Ma insists. “Means more from me, anyway.”

“I love you,” Johnny says, the words curling in his chest and exploding out of his mouth.

Ma smiles softly. “I love you too, babe.”

“I’m a Dingle.”

“That you are,” she says, nodding. “And as a Dingle, it’s your job to support me in my old age.”

Johnny rolls his eyes, the knot in his stomach easing apart. “I already do all your laundry.”

“Oi! Are you calling me old?” Ma turns to Mum. “He’s calling me old.”

“You are,” Mum points out.

“You and all,” Ma fires back. She lets him go, following after Mum as they get the plates down for tea. Moses bumps into him, looking back with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.

Johnny leans against the couch, watching them float around the kitchen, easy and free and  _ family _ . The back door opens with a bang and Uncle Zak is there, Belle trailing behind him and arguing with Sam. Lydia hurries in behind them, reminding them to take their shoes off at the door. Chas rolls her eyes but takes her shoes off, leaning on Aaron for support as they pause in the doorway.

_ Family _ , he thinks.  _ The Dingles are my family _ . 

_ I’m a Dingle _ .

Moses looks back at rolls his eyes as Uncle Zak asks him about Monty Jr. Jr’s flea treatment.

This is the start of the rest of Johnny Dingle’s life.


End file.
